Negaim 5:4-5

Negaim 5:4

Any doubt regarding a nega at the outset is ruled clean until confirmed as unclean; once it has been confirmed as unclean, a doubt is ruled unclean. For example, let’s say that two men came to a kohein – one has a white spot the size of a split bean and the other has a white spot of the size of a sela, At the end of the week, each one has a white spot the size of a sela and it’s not known which one of them experienced spreading. Whether this happened with one man or two men, each one is clean. Rabbi Akiva said that one man is unclean but if there are two men, then each of them is ritually clean.

Negaim 5:5

The previous mishna says, “Once it has been confirmed as unclean, a doubt is ruled unclean.” An example is if two men came to a kohein, one with a white spot the size of a split bean and the other with a white spot the size of a sela. At the end of the week, each was a little bit larger than the size of a sela, so both men are ritually unclean. Even if both spots return to the size of a sela, they both remain unclean until they have returned to the size of a split bean. They is what our Sages meant when they said, “Once it has been confirmed as unclean, a doubt is ruled unclean.”